Wednesday, 30 January 2013

HOW PRO FOOTBALL HOOKED AMERICA REVISITED

This Sunday, 3 February, I will be offering analysis of Super Bowl 47 on BBC2 (and BBC-HD) live from the New Orleans Super Dome. This will mark the sixth straight year for the BBC and me, and we've had five great games in a row, on top of the hype-fest of spectacle, and in contradiction of that adage that Super Bowls, like FA Cup finals, rarely live up to the hype. Back in 2008, before my first BBC Super Bowl, I wrote the following piece for bbc.co.uk--I was asked about it recently, so I thought I'd reprint it here. I intended to go back to my original copy, but when I looked at the piece as posted I thought it held up well enough as it was (if you want to check it on the site, here's a link). One thing that was edited out was that, at the time, Ray Berry was my favourite player (and I would wear his number, 82, in high school because of that). I probably should have mentioned that, after the game, having drunk whiskey and beer all afternoon, all the men got their families together, and drove them home through the snow. And I should also point out that in the five years since I wrote that piece, the price of a 30-second TV ad during the game has increased from $3 million to $4 million, only six per cent per year. Who says America isn't fighting inflation?

The Super Bowl, the championship game of America's National Football
League (NFL), is the world's richest single sporting event. Nearly half
of America will watch it on television on Sunday 3 February.
It's the most costly advertising platform in the world: each 30-second
commercial will sell for $3m. There is no other day in the American
calendar which unites so much of the country.

It hasn't always been so. Today the NFL may fairly claim to be
"America's game" - even though baseball has always been referred to
fondly as "America's pastime".
But not so long ago, pro football was not even gridiron's glamour game -
that honour belonged to the college version of the sport. First Super Bowl
Their relationship was similar to the traditional status of British
rugby. College football was the equivalent of rugby union, an amateur
game played on Saturdays by gentlemen. The college "bowl" games, played
on New Year's Day, in sunny parts of the country between teams from
different regions who normally never met during the autumn season, were
the equivalent of rugby's internationals.

Pro football, in those days, was America's rugby league: played
primarily in the industrial north, on Sundays; a hard game played by
hard men.
The first Super Bowl took place in 1967. At that point it was already
clear that pro football was a business about to boom, thanks to
television. No sport has ever been better suited to the small screen
than American football, with its breaks between plays to invite
analysis, and utilise technological innovations like instant replay,
split screens, and isolated cameras. Colts and Giants
But the game that first showed pro football's potential to hook a mass
TV audience took place almost a decade earlier, on 28 December 1958, in
New York's Yankee Stadium, when the New York Giants met the Baltimore
Colts for the championship of the NFL.

The Colts' quarterback, Johnny Unitas, played semi-pro football on
Pittsburgh fields so devoid of grass they were sprayed with oil to keep
the dust from rising

The NFL players with the highest public profiles were those who had been
college stars, at big universities, and the Giants had more of them,
particularly Frank Gifford, whose good looks and effortless grace at the
University of Southern California inspired Frederick Exley's classic
novel, A Fan's Notes.
I grew up in nearby Connecticut. My father, grandfather, and uncles were
Giants fans; in fact, my father had played in college against the
Giants' star defensive end, Andy Robustelli, who'd come from little
Arnold College in nearby Bridgeport.
But "fan" meant something different then. When these men, aged from 30
to 55, watched the game, they didn't wear replica jerseys, paint their
faces, or discuss their fantasy teams. The idea grown men might follow a
game like children would have struck them as insane.
The Colts, in fact, were closer in spirit to my father and family. Their
quarterback, Johnny Unitas, with his buzz-cut hair and high-topped
boots, had played for little-fancied Louisville University. He played
semi-pro football on Pittsburgh fields so devoid of grass they were
sprayed with oil to keep the dust from rising.

Unitas led his team back into the game, at the end of normal time

The Colts had their own Italian defensive end, the fierce Gino
Marchetti, playing alongside Art "Fatso" Donovan, and Eugene "Big Daddy"
Lipscomb, a six-foot-five, 300-pound behemoth (by 1950s standards, that
is - for today's game he'd be considered undersized.)
The Giants had qualified for the final by beating the Cleveland Browns
two weeks in a row, first in the season's final game, which brought them
level at the top of their division, and then in a one-game playoff.
Their defence, anchored by middle-linebacker Sam Huff, closed down
Cleveland's star runner, Jim Brown, (the future Hollywood actor) who
recorded the worst performance of his career. Extra time
The championship opened with the Colts dominant. They led 14-3 at the
half. But the Giants struck back in the second half, taking a 20-17
lead late in the game.
Unitas calmly led the Colts back. He had a pass-catcher, Raymond Berry,
who ran precise patterns: Unitas could throw the ball knowing exactly
where Berry would be. They combined on three consecutive pass plays,
covering 62 yards. With the game about to end, kicker Steve Myrha
booted a 20-yard field goal, levelling the scores at 20, and sending the
contest to "sudden death" overtime. The first team to score would win.

Only quick-thinking by a television staffer, who ran on the field
like a drunken fan to delay the game, allowed technicians to find and
re-connect the cable

Extra time was a football first. Traditionally, gridiron games ended
when the clock expired, and a draw was considered just reward.
But pro football needed a champion, and the idea of a soccer-style
replay was never an option. The Giants won the coin-toss to receive the
extra time kickoff, but struggled against the Colts' defence. They
punted the ball away, and Unitas took over.
Keeping the Giants off-balance by combining runs and passes, he marched
the team down the field. Then, America lost the television
transmission. The foot-pounding of the visiting Colt supporters had
knocked a cable loose. Record television audience
Only quick-thinking by a television staffer, who ran on the field like a
drunken fan to delay the game, allowed technicians to find and
re-connect the cable. Then, before an astounding (for the time) 45
million viewers, Alan "the Horse" Ameche carried the ball into the end
zone from a yard out, and the Colts had won.

Football celebrity: The Cleveland Browns' Jim Brown later made it in Hollywood

I can still recall the whoops of my father, grandfather, and uncles as
the game was won; a sound of amazed and excited relief, even though
their team, the Giants, had lost.
The game marked a turning point in many ways. It had attracted a record
television audience, but the stadium had not actually sold out. Giants'
owner Tim Mara would die a few weeks later, saddened by the result, but
overjoyed at the rush of season-ticket requests that followed the
contest.
The New York Times ran a magazine feature on Giants' linebacker Huff,
and a CBS television documentary called The Violent World of Sam Huff
would follow. People still loved their local college teams, but the pro
game had announced itself as the better television spectacle.
Finally, the Super Bowl would cement pro football's new place in
American consciousness. In the words of Tex Schramm, the former Dallas
Cowboy general manager, "It was the time when people stopped doing and
started watching".
On Sunday, more of them will likely be watching the Super Bowl than any
show American has ever offered. And it all started with an overtime
game half a century before.

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